The Garden Court (detail), c. 1869/73. Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (British, 1833–1898). Graphite and watercolor, heightened with white gouache; 32.3 x 60.2 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund 1994.197
British artist Edward Burne-Jones labored for over twenty years on his vast painting cycle, The Legend of the Briar Rose (1870-92), transforming the traditional tale of Sleeping Beauty into a modern parable of artistic, social, and political reawakening envisioned on an epic scale. Focusing on the Cleveland Museum of Art’s evocative watercolor study for the third canvas, The Garden Court (1870-75, 1994.197), Dr. Andrea Rager of Case Western Reserve University explores Burne-Jones’s quest to revive beauty amidst the ravages of the industrial age. Free.